A new study shows that a lack of health insurance is associated with nearly 45,000 deaths in the United States each year -- or one death every 12 minutes.

Researchers conducted a survival analysis with data from the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey and analyzed participants aged 17 to 64 years to determine whether uninsurance at the time of interview predicted death. After adjusting for age, gender, education, employment status, smoking and other factors, the authors found that lack of health insurance causes 44,789 deaths each year.

The number of excess deaths is nearly two-and-a-half times greater than previous estimates by the Institute of Medicine, which were based on older studies.